EARLY VIEW in IBIS Museums, taxonomic uncertainty and ‘lost species’: a case study of the Critically Endangered Siau Scops Owl | onlinelibrary.wiley.... A. J. Berryman, J. A. Eaton | #ornithology 🪶

I enjoy reading about the increase in numbers of younger birders. For most of my birding life all I've seen is birders aging together with few youngster coming up behind us. That seems to be changing organically from within Gen Z rather than from initiatives by the birding/wildlife orgs. #ukbirding

I'm one of a growing number of Gen Z birdwatchers - it helps my mental health

Caitlin Andrew hated birdwatching as a child but found a passion for it in her 20s.

bbc.co.uk

Enjoyed a superb birding trip to Shetland from 9th-13th October with @birdingscot.bsky.social, @louisbackstrom.bsky.social, @tomrosas.bsky.social, and James Weeks. Heaps of good birds, but the Grey-cheeked Thrush at Easter Quarff and Golden Oriole at Tresta were definite standouts. #BirdingScotland

Great to spend last week up in the north of Scotland giving talks on my research to @scottishbirding.bsky.social branches in Inverness, Caithness & Orkney. Thank you to each branch for the warm welcome, attentive audiences and interesting questions!

Moth transits! I've been loving the Bogong moth resurgence in 2026, took a chance to capture a few of the many, many moths around Sydney passing in front of the Sun, like furry space stations! ASI585MM @90fps, 100-400mm lens at 300mm, focus shifted slightly between Sun and transiting moths.

Radar image of Tuesday's mass crane migration. A 100 km long line of migrating cranes was clearly visible on weather radar. It is estimated that around 10,000 (?) cranes were involved in that formation. The highest count observed was 26,000 migrating cranes on that day in Kangasala (near Tampere).

Great write-up on recent scientific advances in our understanding of avian vagrancy #ornithology #UKBirding baynature.org/2026/09/15/s...

Are Vagrant Birds Lost, or Pioneers? For Clues, Researchers Look to the Farallones.

A recent study could change our assumptions about why birds show up out of the blue.

baynature.org

Such an impressive compilation of data from tracked birds across (most of) the global range and diversity of Whimbrel in this new collaborative paper in Ibis: look at the map - so many major transoceanic movements onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

Ecologists have discussed the need for quantitative training reform for over a century. Why does progress remain limited? Our new perspective argues how progress has been constrained, and offers an integrated vision to overcome the inertia. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A century of inertia in quantitative ecology education

Ecology has undergone a profound methodological transformation through the rapid growth in new technologies, data volume, statistical innovation and analytical sophistication. These developments c...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The BBS data entry deadline has now passed. Excluding the distance that BBS & WBBS volunteers cover to get to their squares or stretches, this is the cumulative distance covered by surveyors this year. Great effort everyone! @btobirds.bsky.social @jncc.bsky.social @rspbscience.bsky.social

Big new @adriftlab.bsky.social paper - we show for the first time that plastics affects seabirds at the POPULATION level. Plastic ingested as a chick reduces recruitment of birds to the breeding population. And the story is pretty grim. 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Can you deliver an accessible, inclusive and engaging logo design for a new citizen science project? With a prize of £1,500 for the winning design and deadline of midnight on Sunday 9 August 2026. Find out more bit.ly/birdatlaslogo

🚨 We’re recruiting! 🚨 12‑month fixed‑term post for a senior ecological statistician with movement‑modelling expertise. The post is to build movement models for unique seabird + fish datasets, and contribute to major applied & methodological research on offshore renewable energy impacts.

This has lots of implications, perhaps most significantly for discoveries/rediscoveries without specimens e.g. bsky.app/profile/alex... these sorts of (real) images below could easily be faked in future 6/

Alexander Lees@alexanderlees.bsky.social · 11mo ago

The type series of images for the description of Ptilorrhoa urrissia, sp. nov. the "Hooded Jewel-babbler" - no type specimens collected #Ornithology

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

rdcu.be

I had a few thoughts on the results of last years Dotterel survey that I was going to make but then realised the one glaring omission, when are Dotterel predicted to be extinct as a breeding bird in Scotland? Below line of best fit through the last four surveys - answer around 2030, in four years!

🐦🌙 Happy to see this big collaborative paper out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We address a seemingly simple question using geolocator data collected across many species and individuals: how much of bird migration actually happens at night? www.cell.com/current-biol... A short🧵

We have lift off! The first Pufflings are now leaving the Isle of May as birds are now independent. This is a big moment as they’ve never flown and not seen the sea before! Good luck :)

And that book is now published! Free here: teaching-programming.github.io/book/ Phenomenal work by the editors. Pleased to have co-authored two chapters w/ @chrissuthy.bsky.social @talom.bsky.social @chrisoldnall.bsky.social @brittneuropsych.bsky.social @colquhoun.bsky.social Rob Young & Ozan Evkaya

Dr Brittany Blankinship@brittneuropsych.bsky.social · 5mo ago

As you may or may not know, our community of coding and data educators who teach outside of traditional computer science settings has been WRITING A BOOK over the past 16 months, and this book will be launching on June 22nd! 📖🚀 📚Teaching Programming Across Disciplines

SOC has a long-standing commitment to encouraging young people to take part in Conference, recognising the valuable networking and learning opportunities it provides.Thanks to SOC Lothian Branch & an anonymous donor, 15 subsidised Conference places are available tinyurl.com/ykjh7s67 #birdingscotland

Supporting young birdwatchers to attend the SOC’s Annual Conference

This year, the Club's Lothian Branch and an anonymous donor, are offering support to help young birder enthusiasts attend the SOC's Annual Conference. The Conference, which takes place on Saturday 3 O...

tinyurl.com

Johanna Hedlund (Lund University) and colleagues reviewed 392 papers on Odonata migration, confirming 100 migratory dragonfly and damselfly species and 85 possible migrants, including altitudinal round trips within one lifetime. doi.org/10.1002/brv.... Photo: Johanna Hedlund

Thrilled to share that @minecr.bsky.social and my paper on Ten simple rules for teaching data science is now available from @plos.org Computational Biology! journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Ten simple rules for teaching data science

journals.plos.org

We recently published a paper looking at archiving of code and data at the BES, giving recommendations for improvements. buff.ly/jqekQBr This paper has 138 authors from 29 countries! 🌍 Read below to find out how this paper came to be👇 (1)

Data‐ and code‐archiving in the British Ecological Society journals: Present status and recommendations for future improvements

Data- and code-archiving are important components of open science, as both make research more transparent, reproducible, accountable and credible, allowing future researchers to build on previous ...

doi.org

Nice to finally visit Shetland for the first time last week! Mostly quiet bird-wise until I stumbled across a cracking Red-throated Pipit on the beach at Norwick, Unst on my last day. Other highlights were great views of Otter and some rare plants on the Keen of Hamar. #BirdingScotland #RareBirdsUK

Happy 100th birthday to 'our David' 🎂🥳🎉 “Universities, it seems to me, are the most important institution in our society bar none." Happy birthday Sir David Attenborough, Honorary Doctor of Science, 2011 🎂🥳🎉 https://ow.ly/YwKc50YWu6v #EverToExcel

🪶 How does recreational activity affect wildlife? New article led by Amber Cowans links habitat selection theory with a social-ecological systems perspective to show how recreationists and wildlife influence one another #RecreationEcology 📖 Read the full paper here ➡️ buff.ly/IPnVJk3

Curious about what drives transoceanic vagrancy and what it might mean for birds? Our new paper discusses these questions in the context of Hurricane Lee and the remarkable influx of American landbirds recorded in the British Isles in September 2023. Take a look: tinyurl.com/388k3mcp

The new Hotspots Descriptions on eBird is going to be a really useful resource for birders visiting birding spots they’re not familiar with. Similar approach as Wikipedia, with community-based contributions of suggested text #birdingFife share.google/mDmINs0KNoGO...

Community-sourced Hotspot Descriptions and Hotspot Groups are Here - eBird

eBird Hotspots just got even better. New wiki-style About pages and Hotspot Groups offer a richer, more collaborative way to discover birding locations around the world and make the most of every visi...

share.google

Recently published in Austral Entomology: Louis Backstrom demonstrates how citizen science data from iNaturalist reveal substantial gaps and new insights in the distribution of Australian butterflies, including range changes across dozens of species.